Riot has always been a company that takes it’s user base into account when creating new heroes, changing current ones, or adding new concepts to gameplay. With what they showed us at E3, we still see their commitment to their user base, and giving them what they want. Firstly is the new spectator mode. With this addition, first thing i thought of was cheaters, but was reassured that there is a 15-30 second delay from the stream to actual game time, preventing people from cheating on voice chat such as vent or skype.

 

The basic spectator setup.

The setup for spectator mode is pretty simple. On top you have your team scores and total gold earned, along with tower kills, on the sides are the team members, life bars, mana bars, and summoner spells. Bottom has separate scores along with the current items the heroes have, along with minion kills. Your also able to toggle locked camera on certain heroes, and even fog of war for a more realistic feel. I also asked about possible replay recordings. Although no official word yet, it is being worked on, my interest is whether the recordings are saved client or server side, because if the games are saved client then the files will be HUGE.

Next up riot showed me a few of the future heroes they are adding, with a full preview of this guy.

 

Yorick, The Grave Digger is a melee based champion that is a combination of AD with spell support through the summoning of minions. These minions have different abilities that include slows, straight damage, or AOE abilities. As the Riot team told me, during the second day of E3 the design team called and decided to change three of Yorick’s abilities, so a final build isn’t currently available.

Next up was something the community has been asking for. The first female tank. Leona, The Radiant Dawn is a full tank support champion, focusing on damage reduction and crowd control. None of her abilities have been revealed so far other than her Ultimate, a giant beam of light in a large area that stuns or slows opponents and does damage, a great initiator. Here is a concept image of her.

 

 

And what we expect her ultimate to look a little like.

 

Concept image by yours truly.

Lastly we were shown Skarner, The Crystal Vanguard, he reminds us of the original DOTA hero Crystalix, Only a concept of his ultimate was revealed, a grab that lets you drag your opponent slowly to their doom, i instantly realized this would be amazing with flash and ghost, so the team reassured me that he would receive a silencing debuff for the duration of the grab.

 

All in all riot has had a very strong year. Although no solid information was released on magma chamber, It is a possibility that Monkey King may be released upon the beta launch of League of Legends in china. So we all look forward to these awesome additions to a game we all love and enjoy, keep kicking ass Riot.

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Adam Kharakov

Adam “kharakov” Kharat is part nerd, part geek, and full awesome. With deadly writing skills and the sleeping habits of a jackrabbit, late night gaming sessions are all but mandatory.